Biography

Arne J. Almquist is Vice President for Information Management and Decision Support and Dean of the Mary and John Gray Library at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Lamar University (circa 15,000 students), is a Carnegie Research university serving the Southeast Texas region.

As VP for Information Management and Decision Support, he is responsible for overseeing all core university software and applications, data storage and retrieval, data security, business continuity, institutional reporting and decision support analytics. He also works to identify technology tools to increase efficiency and ensure that analytics are used as valuable resources for decision making, as well as providing leadership in the development, implementation and evaluation of university policies and procedures and guidelines related to data use, security and storage.

Previously, Arne served as Associate Provost for Learning Sciences and Technologies, and Dean of the Library at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), an urban university in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region. His areas of responsibility included leadership of the university library, technology in support of learning and instruction, and the university's remote learning center in Grant County, Kentucky. In 2006-2007 he served as Interim University CIO while continuing to lead the university library.

He has worked to aggressively apply technology and new library systems and services to expand access to information resources while more effectively and efficiently expending budgets. He has also worked to bring about a stronger emphasis on information literacy in academic libraries, seeking to produce students who are more effective users of information resources and oriented to lifelong learning.

While at NKU, he instituted a highly successful Bachelor's degree program in library science (Bachelor of Science in Library Informatics), and an equally successful continuing education program in the same field. The bachelor's program was at the center of two Federally-funded projects (over $1 million each), both led by NKU's W. Frank Steely Library, which sought to improve the knowledge and education of public library employees at public libraries throughout rural, isolated areas of Kentucky and West Virginia.

Arne enjoys building collaborative partnerships between various types of entities, both public and private. He holds a PhD in Information Science (University of North Texas, 2006), a Master of Science in Information Science (UNT, 1992), and a Master of Fine Arts in Music Performance (State University of New York at Buffalo, 1982). He served on the 2008 EDUCAUSE Southeastern Regional Conference Program Committee and served for 3 years on the EDUCAUSE Fellowship Advisory Committee.